Saturday, October 22, 2011

Ice Cream Sandwich contains many new and awesome features. However, it is installed only on Galaxy Nexus. Do you want to try Android 4.0 features on your Android smartphone now? If yes, then you can download and try following Android apps on your phone.

1. Launcher

The main part of Android 4.0 is its launcher. In Android market, we have a launcher app, ICS Launcher, that can simulate the launcher of Ice Cream Sandwich. After installing, you will see a beautiful interface. The Favorite Tray and toolbar of this launcher are very similar to those of Android 4.0. The widgets of this launcher can also be resized. You may also want to try 2 other alternative launchers: Nemus Launcher and Go Launcher EX: two alternative launchers for Android.

2. Unlock by face recognition

A second remarkable feature of Android 4.0 is phone unlocking by face recognition. Until now, we don’t have any app that can unlock phone by face recognition. However, the Visidon AppLock app uses face recognition for running apps. With this app, we not only can simulate the face recognition function but also can protect sensitive information such as contacts, messages, emails…

3. Music player

The Music app of Android Ice Cream Sandwich was leaked before. Therefore, we can use this app (can be download the .apk file here) to simulate the Music player of Galaxy Nexus. The interface of this music player is organized by tabs. This app also allows us to integrate with Google Music. Unfortunately, its widget does not have Android 4.0 style.

4. Network management

Android 4.0 has a network management app that can manage the amount of network data used by apps. The Onavo app can do the same thing.

5. Save webpages for reading offline

The browser of Ice Cream Sandwich contains the “Save for Offline” function. We can use Read It Later app to do this. This app can also sync among devices and remove ads or menus.

6. Media Gallery

Do you get bored with the default media gallery of Android? You can use QuickPic app to replace the default Media Gallery. With this app, the media files are loaded faster. This app also contains more photo editing tools.

7. Taking photos with more effects

The default app for taking photos of Android has been changed in Ice Cream Sandwich . You can install Camera Zoom FX to simulate it. This app is not as fast as the one in Android 4.0 but it supports more than 70 effects. It also support image stabilization, timer, zoom, voice activation, continuous shooting, and tilt-shift shooting. You can set this app as the default app for taking photo.

8. Lock screen

You can activate apps in the lock screen of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. You can do more than that with WidgetLocker app. In addition to 2 basic functions: lock/unlock, you can access to any apps from the lock screen. You can also set actions for the sliders on the lock screen.